


Martyr

by juliasets



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Some Pre-Series, a bit think piece-y, come for 12 year old Sam being sweet and heroic, some spoilers through Season 12, stay for Soulless!Sam's abs?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets/pseuds/juliasets
Summary: "It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr." - Napoleon Bonaparte





	Martyr

According to Rusk and Wallace’s _Moral Transformation: The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation_ , martyrs have common features:

  * A hero—someone devoted to a cause
  * Opposition—others who oppose that cause
  * Foreseeable risk—the hero foresees that others may harm them because of their cause
  * Courage and commitment—despite this, the hero continues
  * Death—they are killed for their belief
  * Audience response—the hero’s death is commemorated, others may be inspired



Sam asked his theology professor if that last one was a requirement. Surely those who died for a cause but were never celebrated were even more worthy of worship. His professor agreed that while in truth they might be more devoted, in order to fit the role of a martyr it was necessary for their sacrifice to be known and to inspire others. Or at least, he joked in that cheesy way some of his professors had, that it wouldn’t fly as an excuse Sam forgot it for the midterm.

Sam didn’t argue the point further. But he did make an uncharitable note in the margins of his notebook:

_Seems John’s martyr complex was inaccurate_

He never brought it up, not to his dad or Dean. That notebook burned up with Jess in the fire. He ended up using a lot of things he learned in that class on hunts, but the features of martyrdom wasn’t ever one of them.

 

* * *

**A hero—someone devoted to a cause**

Dean was Sam’s hero.

Dean was sixteen. Dad let him drive the Impala—though to be fair he’d been doing that somewhat regularly for as long as Sam can remember. He was almost as tall as Dad and at twelve Sam figured it’d be just his luck to be short forever. Dean was in high school. He went out on dates with girls who were so pretty they made Sam feel stupid every time he looked at them.

Dean could hit a bullseye every time no matter what gun Dad put in his hands. Dean could almost do the same with a thrown knife. Dean was so much bigger and so good at sparring that it made Sam furious, but unlike Dad he didn’t seem to mind when Sam fumbled his block or whiffed his punch. When it was just the two of them Dean treated sparring like a game, managed to make it fun even when Sam couldn’t land a single hit.

Dean had already hunted all the monsters. Werewolves, and Dean had actually shot one with a crossbow, not just waited in the car like Sam did. Ghouls, definitely. A Black Dog. And more ghosts than either of them could count.

And none of that was the most important thing, which was that Dean always, always looked out for Sam.

So when Sam said, “my brother is coming,” he knew it was true. Even if Melinda looked at him like he was a complete moron. Even when he coughed as the room filled with smoke, he knew in his bones that Dean was coming for him.

Two months ago Silas and Letitia Johnson moved into a new house with their three children. Somehow their realtor had neglected to mention that the house had suffered three significant fires in the past ten years. It had eleven owners in that period, and that was just scratching the surface of the town’s public records. There hadn’t been any deaths, yet, but the each fire was larger than the last. Whatever was going on was escalating.

Dean had joked that some people would do anything for a deal, but had quailed under John’s “you should take hunting more seriously” glare.

Dad and Dean spent most for their time holed up at the local library. Sam wanted to help them—research was his favorite part of hunting—but it turned out that the Johnson’s oldest daughter, Melinda, was Sam’s age. So instead Sam had been instructed to befriend her.

Melinda didn’t make it easy. Even though she was nearly as new to the school as Sam and didn’t have many friends herself, she hadn’t been very interested in talking to the scrawny kid in secondhand clothing. Sam understood; being seen with him wasn’t going to help her make any other friends. Eventually her loneliness won out over her stubbornness and she’d let Sam sit with her at lunch.

Today Melinda had surprised Sam by inviting him over to her house to work on a project for Social Studies. He’d tried to call his Dad, but the motel phone just rang unanswered on the other end; he was probably still at the library, Dean was probably still at the high school. If he’d known ahead of time he would’ve grabbed the EMF meter, but as it was Sam’s only hunting equipment was his knife and a lighter. He’d just thought to use the chance to talk to Melinda and her parents about the house and any strange phenomenon. But only fifteen minutes after starting their homework Melinda’s younger brother, Eric, had run screaming into her room, yelling about noises from the attic.

Melinda had insisted on checking it out to reassure Eric and Will, the youngest. Her parents were still at work and Sam had tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t be dissuaded. Sam had run down to the kitchen and grabbed the largest container of salt he could find before following her, the Johnson boys tagging along.

The attic was drafty and crammed with boxes and furniture under dusty sheets. The most accessible boxes were probably from recent owners, but Sam could see some crowded against the eaves that looked much older. Sam knew that ghosts could become attached to items and the moldy attic had plenty of possibilities.

They’d only been poking through the attic for a few minutes when the door slammed shut. When Sam ran back to try it, he found it sealed tight. As he tugged uselessly on the handle the temperature dropped and Sam’s breath fogged the air in front of him. He’d turned around to see the girl, dressed in simple black clothes, blonde hair bleached white in death.

The Williams kids had screamed in three part harmony, Melinda pushing her brothers behind her.

Sam threw a handful of salt and the ghost dispersed. He’d thought about salting the small attic windows, but if she was tied to something in the room and that would just trap her in with them. Instead he’d made a ring of salt and told them to get in.

“What?” Melinda had said.

“Salt stops ghosts.” Sam tried to be calm, but he was also looking around himself wildly, trying to spot the ghost if she popped up again.

“C’mon, Mel!” Will said, pulling at her hand, and she’d given in.

They’d crowded into the space, pressed up against each other. Eric had his face buried in Melinda’s sweater, arms tight around her. Will was pressed into her side, her arm around his tiny shoulders, as he swung his head back and forth, looking for the ghost. Sam put his back to theirs to widen their field of view.

Every couple of minutes the ghost reappeared, but Sam had the salt ready when she did.

It didn’t take long for the terror to fade. After a little while the ghost’s sporadic appearances became routine, almost mundane. She wasn’t a very violent spirit, for which Sam thanked any deity that might be listening.

“How do you know about ghosts?” Melinda whispered.

“My family stops them,” Sam said. “They’ll come help.” Because they stood back-to-back he couldn’t see if she accepted his answer, but she didn’t reply.

They stood in the ring of salt for a long time. Sam thought it was at least an hour. The salt was running low and Sam was running out of ideas. He’d been hoping that his family would return to the motel, notice his absence, and come looking for him. He’d been straining his ears, listening for the trademark rumble of the Impala, but no dice.

And that’s when he smelled the smoke. Through the gloom he could see it trickling up through the gap under the attic door, between the spaces in the old floorboards, along the edges of the room. Something was on fire in the house below.

Sam got the kids to crouch down as the smoke accumulated in the rafters, trying to avoid as much smoke inhalation as he could. He hadn’t noticed the exact moment that the unearthly chill of a haunting had transitioned into the dry heat of a house fire, but after a few minutes he was already sweating.

“We need to get out of here,” Melinda hissed.

“My brother is coming,” Sam replied, and he knew it was true, but he was no longer sure Dean would be in time.

“Does he even know you’re here?” she asked.

Unsure whether he wanted to reveal that his family had been looking into her family’s house, Sam opted for a shrug.

“We can’t wait for him,” she insisted.

Sam shook his head. “We can’t open the door. And the fire is below us, if we open the door the fire will spread up here.” He glanced around, but the attic stairs were the only way in or out of the room.

Well, not exactly.

“The windows!”

Melinda followed his gaze. “We can’t _jump out the window!_ ” she hissed, eyes wide and white in the attic gloom. 

In his head Sam pictured the outside of the house. The attic windows were small, but big enough for them to fit. The problem would be getting to the ground. If they climbed out onto the roof they’d be three stories up.

But the roof above the large front porch stuck out. If they could get to the front of the house, they could climb down to that, and from that to the ground.

Sam could do it, probably without any broken bones. But Melinda and Eric and Will? He looked around the room.

“The sheets!” he said. “We can use them to climb down.”

Melinda’s face was terrified, but she nodded anyway. The room was nearly filled with smoke, and Sam blinked his eyes against the sting. Deciding that the fire was a bigger danger than the ghost, Sam grabbed a sheet off the nearest couch and ran to the window, keeping his body low. He unlocked the window latch and tried to push it open.

Nothing.

He wrapped his hand in the sheet, turned his face away, and slammed his fist against the window.

Pain shot up his wrist, but the thick pane of glass didn’t even crack.

“Here!” 

Sam turned to see Melinda wielding a baseball bat and dove out of the way just as she smashed a gaping hole in the window. Cool night air immediately blew in.

“Thanks,” he said, using his wrapped hand to break the rest of the jagged shards of glass out of the way. Through the gap in the window he could hear the faint trill of sirens and he prayed that they were headed his way.

He glanced back. Eric and Will were still huddled in the ring of salt. “Come on!” They scrambled forward.

Melinda climbed out first, reaching back inside as Sam helped Eric through and then passed Will into her waiting arms. Sam grabbed his sheet and another off a nearby box and passed them to Melinda before clambering through himself. The last sight he had of the inside of the house was the translucent figure of the girl standing in the center of the room, watching them. For a restless spirit she didn’t seem very angry, and she didn’t come after them.

They’d emerged on the side of the house, so Sam herded them carefully around the corner of the sloped roof to the front and sat them on the cool shingles. Sam threw one end of the sheet down, pleased to see it almost reached the roof of the porch.

“Melinda, you gotta go first!”

She slid on her butt to the edge, dangling her legs over the edge before jerking back with a yelp. “It’s hot!”

The fire must have been on the second story. “Can you do it?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yeah, yeah.” She edged her way closer to the edge before grabbing the sheet. Sam braced himself as she transferred her weight to the fabric, leaning back as he felt her lower herself hand-over-hand to the next level.

He glanced Eric and Will, sitting with their arms wrapped around their knees. “You guys ever climb trees?”

Eric didn’t seem to register the question, but Will nodded eagerly.

“This is just like that. Just gotta climb back down,” Sam said calmly. “You ready, Melinda?” he called out.

He heard her call something back, but he couldn’t make it out over the increasing roar of the fire. “Go on, Will!”

Will scrambled forward, mimicking his sister’s movements as he grabbed onto the sheet. He was much lighter and the sheet didn’t tug for very long before it released as Melinda took her brother’s weight.

“Eric?” Sam called.

Eric’s dark brown skin looked washed out with fear. His eyes stared out blankly into the night.

“Eric,” Sam repeated. “You gotta go.”

“I can’t,” he said, and Sam only heard it because he was standing so close to the boy.

Eric was probably ten and nearly as tall as Sam himself. There was no way Sam could lower him down the roof. He needed to make the boy move. 

“Eric, if you don’t move your sister and brother are going to be stuck here. They’re going to die.”

That seemed to reach something, as Eric turned to stare at Sam in horror.

“You need to move, now.”

It was slow, but Eric crawled forward, tentatively extending his legs over the gutter. The sheet almost slipped as Eric put his weight on it, but Sam tightened his grip even through his aching wrist.

And then Eric’s weight was gone and Sam was throwing himself over the edge, fingers grasping at the gutter. It was just before he dropped that he heard it:

“Sammy!”

Fortunately the roof of the porch was less steep than at the top, as Sam landed and stumbled. Heat hit the side of him closest to the house. Hands grabbed at him and he turned around to see the Impala parked in the middle of the street, Dean and Dad standing in front of it and staring up at him with wide eyes. If they shouted anything else he didn’t hear over the roar of the fire. The windows behind him shone brightly with flame.

He could hear the sirens, though. They were close now, Sam could tell that they were coming for this house. He just wanted to be in the backseat of the Impala with Dean.

He met his brother’s eyes and Dean seemed to understand. The teenager strode forward, passed worried onlookers.

Heat pressed into his back and Sam moved into gear. His brother was here, he could do this now. He wouldn’t let Dean down.

The first story was taller than the second. Consulting his mental picture, Sam herded the kids to the left side of the porch, the side with the soft lawn, not the hard concrete driveway. Dean followed on the ground. Sam had thrown the second sheet over his shoulder and he unlooped it now and began tying it to the first, hoping it’d be long enough.

With Dean on the ground Sam told Will to go first and the boy was quickly over the side.

“Got him!” Dean called up.

Eric was next and Melinda helped him to the edge, one of his hands clasped in hers as he slowly transferred his weight over to the sheets. Sam took Eric’s weight with a grunt as the sheet jerked in his hands.

“He’s down!”

A window shattered behind him and Melinda was already over the edge.

The moment Sam felt her weight disappear, even before Dean called up, he was throwing himself at the edge. He could feel familiar callused hands close around his ankles, and then his calves as he lowered himself down, arms straining.

“Got ya, Sammy,” Dean said.

Sam let go.

Dean’s hands caught around his waist and he lowered his brother to the ground before clasping him again tightly in a hug.

Later, John deflected the fervent thanks of the Williams parents. Later, Melinda found Sam where he was being looked over by the EMTs, an oxygen mask across his face and gave him a kiss on the cheek, his first. Later, Sam blushed so hard it felt like he was back in the fire.

But just then he looked up into eyes that glowed bottle green in the light of the fire. “I knew you’d come!”

* * *

 

**Opposition—others who oppose that cause**

She was the best of them even though nobody knew it.

Demons were created from human souls, had been humans once upon a time. They didn’t just have human flaws—they were human flaws writ large. Pride was one of the biggest ones. Most people who dealt for their soul did so for wealth or glory and it was pride that drew them to the crossroads.

Ruby had been one of them, long ago.

So to keep this secret, to be seen as a traitor among her kind when really she was the best, the most loyal, better than any of the nameless scum who cursed her and attacked her… it was infuriating.

She did it anyway.

It was hard to believe that some thought this boy could ever rule them. This boy who whimpered and cried, who wouldn’t even fuck her until she found a hollowed out meatsuit. 

She had thought that once she dangled power in front of him, the power necessary to save his brother, that the tricky part would be holding him back from getting too strong too quickly. If he really opened himself to power he might actually be able to kill Lilith and save his brother, which would ruin everything. She thought she’d have to hold him back.

But, no, instead Sam had no interest in any of it. By the time he’d capitulated, at the eleventh hour of Dean’s deal, she’d relished telling him the vicious truth—that he was too late.

After the hellhounds dragged the elder Winchester to hell Ruby leaned on the jagged wound that was Sam’s guilt and misery, offered him revenge as a balm.

Contact with Lilith was scarce, but sometime after Ruby found herself riding a braindead sorority girl the First Demon appeared to her and told her that Dean Winchester would return.

The good news was that the first seal had broken, so Dean must’ve broken as well. Dean was even now strolling along the path Ruby had taken so long ago. Nothing and no one could change what he’d done. Dean had been so sure of his own goodness, so self-righteous in his humanity. Ruby was thrilled to see him cut down to size.

But she hadn’t planned for his return. Lilith wouldn’t say how, or when, wouldn’t give any details at all, just that Dean would soon be topside, and not as a demon.

Ruby was so fucked.

It had taken her a long time to realize that Sam responded better to the ability to save hosts from demonic possession than to the power to attack and kill demons outright. She’d worked to show Sam the good he could do with his powers. 

Ugh. What a putz.

He seemed happy to be able to save some of the meatsuits. But Ruby also knew that Sam still hated his powers, hated the reminder of Azazel’s corruption. If a newly resurrected Dean asked Sam to stop using his powers, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to keep him moving towards her goal.

She wished she could believe that Dean would be a bit less sanctimonious after his own stay in hell—and after taking up the blade—but she knew better. If Dean came back she’d lose Sam. All her hard work, gone.

She need something to make Sam turn on Dean.

And honestly? She was coming up blank.

Which means she’d need to somehow get Dean to turn on his brother. Dean had gone to hell for the kid. It wouldn’t be easy.

Sam using his powers would help. Dean had made his opinions on that more than clear. Faced with the possibility of Sam using his powers to save him, Dean had opted for hell.

Though perhaps he’d learned better now.

In which case a little psychic exorcisms wouldn’t be enough to turn him away.

Sam had confessed that he knew about Azazel giving him demon blood as a baby. And that he’d never told Dean, to ashamed and afraid of what it meant for Sam.

A couple drops of demon blood probably wouldn’t be enough to drive a wedge between them, either.

Azazel’s blood lost some of its potency after the Prince of Hell’s death. Even Sam knew that, blamed it for his lack of visions. But eventually Sam would have to drink a lot more, in order to prepare his body for Lucifer. She was going to wait, afraid of Sam getting too powerful too fast.

But perhaps it was time.

* * *

 

**Foreseeable risk—the hero foresees that others may harm them because of their cause**

It pissed them off when Sam laughed at them, but he did it anyway. Hell, he did it because it pissed them off. He got his kicks where he could.

“Is that…” Sam paused to spit out a mouthful of blood onto the concrete floor. “That the best you got?”

The demon’s response was a punch to the gut, knocking the air out of him.

Sam didn’t really remember much of hell, wasn’t entirely sure how he was topside, but if this was the best that demons had, then he wasn’t worried.

He’d been stupid, getting himself captured. To be fair, there had been a lot of demons. Still, if Samuel or the rest of the Campbells found out they’d never let him live it down. 

Which meant that he’d have to get himself out of this mess before they found out.

His wrists were shackled, the chain binding them hooked to another chain that rose up to a ceiling beam. It seemed to be an abandoned warehouse of some sort. Very original.

His feet were similarly bound, shoes gone. His undershirt was in tatters, though they’d left his jeans so far. Small mercies. They seemed to like knives. Sam kind of got the fascination, but he wasn’t overly impressed by their creativity.

They wanted to know where Dean was.

Sam knew, of course. He checked up on Dean every once in a while, saw his brother living the apple pie life with that yoga instructor.

He’d considered letting his brother know that he was back. He was pretty sure that before he’d gone to hell he would’ve. Something had changed since hell, something about Sam. He was different. Not necessarily better or worse, though he was a much more efficient hunter. But based on his own memories he was pretty sure Dean wouldn’t appreciate the changes.

But even given all that, he still wasn’t going to tell them where Dean lived.

So it was time to get himself out of here.

Not for the first time Sam wished that he’d at least snuck into the garage where Dean was storing the Impala to steal Ruby’s demon-killing knife. It’d make this a hell of a lot easier.

The brains of the operation, a demon riding an elderly Asian woman, held up a hand and the stooges stepped back.

“Come on, Sam. We’ve been tailing you. We know that you he’s not with you. He clearly got sick of looking after little brother. You don’t need to protect him.”

Screw the knife, Sam wished he still had his powers. He’d tried to use them, tried to find that place inside him that he once tapped into to exorcise and kill demons. He hadn’t been planning on drinking any demon blood, didn’t want to deal with the addiction and possible withdrawal, but he assumed that Ruby’s words after he’d released Lucifer had meant that he hadn’t needed the blood after all. 

But he couldn’t. Whatever it was inside him that gave him abilities simply wasn’t there. He wasn’t sure what that meant, if he’d somehow lost them in hell, but he mostly made do with old-fashioned exorcisms and holy water. He’d memorized quite a few of them, now that he was looking for ways to pass sleepless nights.

So now he had to get himself out of this the old fashioned way.

Great.

He flashed the lead demon a grin. “I think he joined a convent.”

The demon sighed an affected, put-upon sigh. “Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam.” She waved her hand one of the goons drove his fist into Sam’s gut. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. We’re going to go and find some poor, innocent shmuck. Probably a girl, probably young. We’re going to bring her back here. And if you don’t tell us where your brother is, we’re going to disembowel her. Sound good?”

Sam glared at her as she gathered her two minions and left. A heavy steel door clanged as it shut behind them and he let the expression fade. He knew he wasn’t going to tell them. He also knew that once upon a time their threat would’ve worked better on him and he wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. But either way, the best course of action was still to get out of here.

The chain he was attached to was looped around a beam about ten feet up. He glanced up, cocked his head as he estimated. With a grunt he grabbed the chain and pulled himself up. It was obnoxious, scaling the chain with the limited reach of his bound wrists, but memorizing exorcisms wasn’t the only thing his sleepless nights were good for. His shoulders and arms ached as he hauled himself up the chain.

When he got close enough he swung his legs, used the momentum and his core to invert himself, lifting his legs up and wrapping his knees around the ceiling beam. The resulting position took some of the pressure off his shoulders, allowing them to rest for the first time in hours. It also gave him access to the carabiner holding the chain in place.

When he dropped back down he was no longer chained to the ceiling, though he was still trailing a long length of heavy chain. It could be used in a fight if need be, but he’d much prefer ease of movement. Fortunately one of the many implements of torture pulled together by the demons was a screwdriver, which solved that problem for him.

Free of restraints, he considered fleeing, either to get back up from the Campbells or just to get back to his supplies. But he couldn’t be sure the demons would still be here by the time he returned.

He glanced around at the supplies they’d collected to torture him, assessed.

Yeah, he could make this work.

Not twenty minutes later the demons returned. They had a young woman with them, bound and gagged. The henchmen pushed her stumbling ahead of them as they entered the room.

“What—” the demon said. “Where is he?”

The heavy door slammed behind them.

“When you get back to hell,” Sam said. “Feel free to remind them what happens to demons who fuck with a Winchester.”

* * *

 

**Courage and commitment—despite this, the hero continues**

Sam woke coughing.

He was still mostly asleep when he rolled over, felt the hacking cough dislodge something in his chest. He spat over the side of the bed, onto the floor. The room was dark, but Sam didn’t need to see to know what it’d look like.

The trials were changing him.

That wasn’t surprising. The trials were a spell to close the gates of hell as dictated by God himself, of course they’d exact a toll.

The surprising part was that Sam didn’t mind.

Sam sat up, slowly. His body ached right down to his bones. He stood, staggered, made it to the door and leaned heavily on the wooden frame. He’d been running a fever for a couple weeks now, mostly just low grade, but it seemed to spike at night. It was running him down. He’d lost weight. His muscles ached, he felt weak.

He could handle it, though. Sam’s body had been a battleground since before he could remember. Since at least he was six months old, if not since before he was even born. At least this time the fight was on his own terms.

The hallway was bright and he squinted against the light as he made his way to the kitchen.

He’d felt something after completing the first trial, but it was after finishing the second that he knew for sure. He’d told Dean that he should be the one to finish the trials because unlike Dean he saw a finish line that wasn’t a grave. He wasn’t on a kamikaze mission, he wanted to close the gates of hell so they could both live. Maybe they wouldn’t retire, but without demons the job would get a hell of a lot easier.

Pun intended.

Sam thought he should finish the trials so they could both life safely.

He’d been wrong.

He slumped onto one of the bench seats at the table. He’d left the kitchen light off, but the hallway gave off enough light to see by and he knew his way around already. With a grunt he pushed himself back up and headed for the sink.

In order to close the gates of hell he needed to be pure, an instrument of God. The trials were purifying him, purging him of the demon blood and all the evil he’d spent his entire life swimming in. But Sam was reminded that one of the strongest purifying forces was fire. He was burning from the inside out.

He hadn’t meant to lie to Dean when they’d started the first trial. He really had meant to survive.

But now he knew he wouldn’t.

The water from the tap in the bunker was surprisingly good. Sam had been meaning to investigate, try and figure out where it was drawing from. The water wasn’t very hard, so Sam assumed there was some sort of filtration system in place. Dean seemed to be taking a “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” approach to every mysterious aspect of the bunker. Sam preferred to understand in case something went wrong. Dean was better at tinkering and this kind of stuff, but Sam could find his way around most machines, had only gotten better the year after the Leviathans, when he’d supplemented his money by doing odd jobs for motel owners.

The reminder of that year sent a shiver through him, though perhaps that was the fever. His hand clenched around the glass.

He hadn’t known that Dean was in purgatory. How could he? Humans had never ended up there before. After Dean had disappeared he’d done his due diligence, had summoned a couple demons who assured him—under duress—that Dean wasn’t downstairs. He’d thought about trying the same on an angel but without Castiel it had been too risky. The assumption, then, was that Dean was living it up in his version of heaven.

Shaky from confronting demons, dogged by his own memories of hell, and entirely alone, Sam had just… run. Packed up the Impala and drove it until the road ran out. Slept a few hours and repeated. He hadn’t seen many possible endings. A tree, maybe. A bullet, if not.

Until he’d hit Riot.

Digging himself out of that spiral, trying to learn to be a person again with half of him gone, had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Harder in a lot of ways than jumping into the Cage. Jumping had been one decision, one instant, and then he just had to live with the results. Living had been a never-ending series of decisions, endless instants, interminable moments that he had to keep pushing through.

He’d thought he was doing the right thing. But Dean was right, he’d left Kevin and their friends high and dry. He’d run. He couldn’t blame Dean for being upset with him about it. Sam had run from the life before. He’d needed to, needed the outlet, needed to escape then. But he was older now, he understood how Dean interpreted that abandonment.

He won’t run now. He would see this through.

Another wave of coughs struck and he hacked into his hand, reaching over for their pile of napkins after to wipe the blood off.

He was going to close the gates of hell. There were so many people he’d save, people who had made deals like Dean did, those who hadn’t made their deals yet.

Dean himself.

Sam had thought, in the beginning, that he’d be able to live in that world with his brother. He was realizing now that he’d been wrong. But it was okay. It’d be worth it. Dean had taken care of him, looked after him, his entire life. It was his chance to return the favor. His chance to show Dean a world worth really living in.

* * *

 

**Death—they are killed for their belief**

Sam has died before.

He couldn’t say exactly how many times because it’s not clear what counted. Jake’s knife in his back at Cold Oak was the most obvious. Jumping into Lucifer’s cage definitely counted. Probably being shot by Walt and Roy just before that.

But what about being struck by lightning on the case with the Tiamat coin and the wishes? That had been reversed pretty quickly. Or being stabbed by Anna in1978? Or almost dying after the trials?

That was all to say that Sam had experience with dying.

But kneeling on the floor of a run-down Mexican restaurant as his brother stood prepared to kill him?

This was the worst one.

Pain shot through his head, throbbed across his jaw and temple. Sam had tried to give it his all, but part of him instinctively held back.

It was Dean, after all.

Dean, fueled by the Mark on his forearm, had not held back. Sam had been punched by his brother before, so he knew that the blows he’d just taken were Dean at full force.

He panted. He’d called for mercy, realizing that there was no way out of this but through. This had been a long time coming, the mark corrupting his brother for so long. It had turned him into a demon. There wouldn’t be any easy fixes. Maybe Dean’s plan was for the best.

But someday in the future Dean would eventually regain control and Sam wanted to make sure that this wasn’t how he remembered Sam. That when Dean got back to being Dean, he knew that his brother had understood.

“You’ll never, ever, hear me say that you—the real you—is anything but good.” He spat out a mouthful of blood. “But you’re right. Before you hurt… anyone else. You have to be stopped, at any cost. I understand.”

He looked up at his brother.

“Do it.”

Death handed Dean his scythe. Sam stared up at the weapon. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been this. He supposed perhaps Death held a grudge from being stood up, back when Sam had almost allowed himself to be reaped. Back when Dean had saved him. He exhaled.

“Close your eyes.”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t shut out Dean, not now, not at the end.

“Sammy, close your eyes.”

It’d be easier for Dean if he did and he almost acquiesced when he remembered the photos burning a hole in his pocket. He took them out, splayed them across the scuffed wooden floor.

“Wait. Take these. And one day, when you find your way back, let these be your guide. And they can help you remember what it was to be good. What it was to love.”

In front of him was a picture of Dean and Mary and another of Mary, Sam and Dean. They had so few images of her, so little evidence that they’d had a mother, that she loved them once. At least these pictures reminded Dean of his own actual memories. For Sam they were just points of data.

Sam never had a mother. But he'd had Dean. Dean who had tied his shoes and fed him and kept him safe.

Death spoke, but Sam couldn’t focus on what the Horseman said. His ears were ringing.

Sam nodded.

“Forgive me,” Dean said, as if Sam was capable of anything less.

Dean wound up.

Sam shut his eyes.

* * *

 

**Audience response—he hero’s death is commemorated, others may be inspired**

As written by Chuck, the Winchester gospels are dreck. It’s the height of blasphemy to think it, but his previous holy texts tended to be improved as they were filtered through humans more eloquent than he. Chuck’s strengths lay elsewhere.

The real Winchester gospels aren’t written down. They live in the people they’ve save.

Melinda Kane, née Johnson, sits around a campfire and tells her children about the time she saw a ghost. They knew about the house fire because their mother insists on testing the smoke alarm every month, even as their father rolls his eyes behind her back. But she doesn’t often talk about the ghost. She hates the looks people give her when she admits to believing in them.

“Uncle Eric was so scared,” she tells them, and they laugh, because Uncle Eric is tall and strong and not afraid of anything. “But Sam knew what to do.”

“Who’s Sam?”

“A friend from school.” She nods at her eldest. “We was about your age, Gabi. But he and his family fought ghosts.”

“Like the Ghostbusters?” Elijah asks.

Melinda laughs. “Well, not exactly. I don’t think he had any fancy machines like that. He just used salt.”

“Salt!” Gabi says. “That’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb if it works,” her mother replies. “That’s the night our house burned down. We were trapped in the attic with the ghost and Sam got us down, helped us climb to the ground.”

“Did the ghost start the fire?” Elijah asks.

She doesn’t know how to answer. The ghost had been freaky, but Melinda had never been sure if she’d started the blaze. She wondered if Sam knew.

When her parents bought that house the school had been so much better than her old one but the kids had been so much worse. They weren’t really that mean, but being the new black girl in a lily-white suburb had left her so lonely she’d once begged her parents to let her go back to her old school. Sam’s offer of friendship was so unexpected, so odd, that she couldn’t help but eventually be charmed by the awkward kid in his faded band shirts.

Her parents had been convinced that the fire was started by a person, some angry neighbor who didn’t like their presence in an otherwise entirely white neighborhood. Sometimes Melinda thought that the ghost had been trying to warn them instead. 

She had wanted to ask Sam about the ghost, find out everything he knew. But she’d taken a few days off of school and by the time she returned Sam was gone. 

She wonders if he still hunts for ghosts. She wonders if he’s still alive. She thinks about all the other people he might have saved. She thinks of the weird club she’s now a member of, people all connected by the scrawny kid she once knew, all unaware of each other. 

At the time she’d thought he seemed weird, a little too old for his years. Now, with decades of perspective, she realizes that he was just a kid.

She’s thankful that Sam saved her. But she wonders who saved him.

* * *

 

The best and worst version of the Winchester Gospels are the stories passed from hunter to hunter.

Jody was surprised, when she took the Winchesters to Asa’s funeral, that Sam and Dean had never met any of the hunters there. She knew that the boys dealt with some big stuff, that with anyone else the hunts tended to be mundane monsters like werewolves and vampires and not gods and goddesses. But until Bucky pulls her aside after Asa’s funeral she never realized how far from what even hunters considered normal her friends were. Sam and Dean, she learned, were legends. Figures from hunter mythology.

She can’t see them like that, she’s known them as people for too long. She’s seen them eat sloppily at her dinner table, heard them make fun of each other for being a nerd or liking Japanese animated porn. But when she realizes that they’re more than just hunters she starts digging.

She’d always known that something big had gone down the year that Owen came back from the dead. But she hadn’t known that it was the actual apocalypse, or that it had been stopped by her friends. By Sam jumping into the depths of hell and taking Lucifer with him. She pictures Sam as she knew him shortly before that, baby soft skin over towering muscle. She tries to picture that twenty-something kid with the sad eyes in hell.

She knew about the Leviathans. She learns about The Darkness. She learns about a generation of kids with powers and a demon’s plan for them. She learns about massive, world-ending events and along with every single one the same two people, fighting forces that she can’t even begin to comprehend.

When the Winchesters decide they need to do something about the British Men of Letters and ask Jody to call in her hunting contacts, she strategically doesn’t mention who’s organizing the gathering. Most of her hunting friends don’t even recognize them when they arrive to her house. Hell, if Dean’s to be believed, the ones who did had killed them at some point. She’s not sure she wants that story. 

But despite all, or possibly because of it, they agree to Sam’s plan. It doesn’t surprise her. Jody liked Sam, but he had a habit of making himself only as big as he needed. Which was a hilarious idea for someone built like a brick shithouse, but there it was. He was reserved. Dean’s always been the bigger, brasher personality. 

But there’s something compelling about Sam, buoyed by his brother’s faith, asking them to follow him. They’ve both been through hell—literally, she reminds herself—but given the demon blood and Lucifer and everything she knows that Sam was never supposed to be as good as he was.

She wonders how that happened.

The hunters don’t all make it back, but the ones that do aren’t any less awed by the Winchesters after seeing one in action. 

The Sam Winchester they saw that day? That man was a leader, a hero.

He was a legend.

**Author's Note:**

> All theology stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia. 
> 
> I wrote this for the [Sam Winchester Creations Challenge](http://samcreationschallenge.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and I'm literally rushing to post it before the deadline. Whoops, busy month! The theme this month was "roles" and my prompt, as you might guess, was **martyr**. It ended up being more think-piece-y than I was hoping, but I'm posting it anyway!


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